Codeswitching on the Web

“The book is well laid out and reader-friendly, with engaging and even entertaining data. The introductory overview of theoretical debates in the Jamaican and creole studies literature is extremely helpful and makes the study accessible to scholars who are otherwise unfamiliar with the Jamaican case. Hinrichs has created some unusual and innovative corpora.”

“[...] this study sets a landmark in the study of the multilingual internet and will be a indispensable point of reference for researchers engaging with CMC against the background of sociolinguistics and discourse studies.”

“[...] the volume under review is an outstanding dissertation and highly recommendable reading for anyone interested in any of the fields of study involved.”

“[...] this book is likely to appeal to researchers, teachers and students across a range of disciplines: New World Englishes, Creole, discourse and identity and CS. An important contribution of the book is the provision of the whole corpus and its main strenght lies in its ability to apply an impressive range of theoretical approaches to the analysis of the data and to demonstrate new ways in which speakers are ensuring language vitality of a 'minority' oral language, through the adaptations to new media and written code.”

“The research reported in the volume is extremely innovative and represents a theoretical and methodological contribution to several areas of current interest: computer-mediated communication (especially in the context of a country where computers are less accessible), the use and development of vernacular language varieties in writing, the study of codeswitching, in particular written codeswitching. This book is of interest to researchers in all of these areas, and coherently brings the topics together with excellent and insightful discussions of the literature. In addition it makes a valuable theoretical contribution to the area of creole studies and the longstanding theoretical debates about the ‘creole continuum’.”